Definition of Fanciful

Definition of Fanciful

Medical Definition of Fanciful

1.
1. Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects.
2. Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.
3. Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress. "Gather up all fancifullest shells." (Keats)
Synonym: Imaginative, ideal, visionary, capricious, chimerical, whimsical, fantastical, wild.
Fanciful, Fantastical, Visionary. We speak of that as fanciful which is irregular in taste and judgment; we speak of it as fantastical when it becomes grotesque and extravagant as well as irregular; we speak of it as visionary when it is wholly unfounded in the nature of things. Fanciful notions are the product of a heated fancy, without any tems are made up of oddly assorted fancies, aften of the most whimsical kind; visionary expectations are those which can never be realized in fact. Fan"cifully, -Fan"cifulness.
Source: Websters Dictionary
(01 Mar 1998)

Fanciful Pictures

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Literary usage of Fanciful

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1.Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1891)"... Men of the woods—Myths of Error, Perversion, and Exaggeration: stories of
Giants, Dwarfs, and Monstrous Tribes of men—fanciful explanatory Myths—Myths ..."

2.The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster (1874)"The '- ' exact truth must be there ; but the merit or art in the A word for the
fanciful in description. ' narrator, is the manner of stating the truth. ..."

3.Walden; Or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau (1893)"... thy existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull ?
Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold With our congenial souls ..."

4.The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England by John Campbell Campbell (1845)"He was rather fanciful about his health, preferring meats fanciful which bred "juices
substantial and less ..."

5.Publishers Weekly by Publishers' Board of Trade (U.S.), Book Trade Association of Philadelphia, American Book Trade Union, Am. Book Trade Association, R.R. Bowker Company (1882)"The set of the fanciful, quaint, and tender collection of lines by Mary D.
Brine, familiar to the holiday buyers of last year under its title of " My Boy ..."

6.Censura Literaria: Containing Titles, Abstracts, and Opinions of Old English by Egerton Brydges (1815)"On the fanciful additions to the new Edition of Wells's Geography of the Old
Testament. ... fanciful ..."